The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1887-06-24
THE SMALL BOYS DAY,

And How He Celebrates It with Fire
and Noise.
And thus the editor muses.: Why the FIRE
cracker9 Why, indeed, the stridulous small.
boy, who, with ventilated apparel, one SUE
pender and unsandaled feet, accompanies tia
firecracker In Its orbit Of flame? Why
pop and fzz on the Fourth more
than any others Why then more than
any other time doth the small boy
rage and grow insolent, and touch of
everything that hath noise in it, from paper
torpedo to a fish horn, and brighten horses
and get asleep on curbstones, and tear bis
trousers and burn his eyebrows, and do vari-
Gus other dreadful things for which he has
been called to account ever since he came in
voguea What relation has the firecracker to
the Declaration Of Independence Or what
the horse frightening, bowling small boya
The one is Chinese invention that has no
earthly Specification beyond sputter and fizz;
the other has but faint idea of what the
Declaration he is trying to glorify means
He Is, in truth, the most absolutely depend
emit creature in nature.
Who started this combination of youth and
saItpeter, OF vocal haircloth and the limbs of
the jumping, JACK, of fire. fZzle and bangl
Il Is laid at John Adams door because he
said something about Che EEnging OF bells, the
firing of ca5msn, etc. BaS epum he have
taken the small boy into accQunt when he
said itl DID he dream Of the annual nerve
racixing tumslt he was preparing for future
generatioHsl Had he any idea that Fourth
of July celebrations would SO generally be car
ried on, or at least aggravated, by small boys
of extraordinary lung power and never fall
tering energyi Impossiblel John Adams
was noble man, a patriot, a statesman, but
be was not in air things clairvoyant He
could not look forward and see the small
boy of 1887 celebrating the Fourth of
July to the terror and peril of his
seniors. The toy pistol was not in
vogue in John Adams day, nor had
the fire cracker obtained a foothold on Amer
lean soil Dogs with explosives tied to their
tails entered noe Mr.. Adams idea Of celebrat-
bag. All these have come in with other mod
err implements of torture until we now have
day which powder and the small boy claim
for their own
Noise and happiness, patriotic enthusiasm
and Chinese crackers are convertible Terms.
The small boy seizes the Fourth of July as
his own, and custom has handed it over to
him to do as he pleases with it. He is so
smallest fraction of it that he begins to take
possession on the evening of the 3D. He sits
up all night In order to @usher in the day"
with the loudest racket he can produce.
He brings noises to the front the
moment the midnight hour arrives,
and from that on until midnight comes
again he accompanies himself with fire,
fame, conclusion and reverberation. Little
he recks that his wind up is WEAKNESS, Bills
tiers, mutilation Of his body, and trouble with
his stomach. All those things are for his
elders to look after and make right.
He has now had over a century of this sort
of thing and shows no signs of getting tired
of it. And the firecracker multiplies and
grows upon us. In the provincial towns it is
mitigated by professions, orations, municipal
demonstrations, lemonade, gingerbread and
spruce beer. But In the city the firecracker
RACES without mitigation.
These remarks the small boy viii not like.
But the day will come when he will admit
the force Of them. That day will be when he
has passed out Of small boyhood into what he
now calls "fogyism," otherwise full grown
and possibly middle aged citizenship. he
viii then occasionally remark that "all Is
vanity, aye, even glory and firecrackers.n
And his sons viii laugh In their sleeves and
speak of him as @the old man." and decide
that lie has forgotten his youth. The dew
and freshness of the dawn OF life viii be over
for him, and with him win go his former
close appreciation of Fourth of July explo-
sives. Sometimes he viii hear himself re-
ferred to as "old Wilkins'-if Wilkins is his
name-and it win give him queer and not
at all pleasant sensation.
In view Of all this we must bear patiently
with the small boy and his extravagantly ex-
plosive patriotism. 1t will have its end, like
all earthly things, and in its train will come
no end of responsibilities, ambitions. griev-
ances and vexations, and the rheumatism
and mental dyspepsia; and-who knowsl-per-
haps we will occasionally look ON the small
boy and his firecrackers with envy.